X-Seti from the GTA: State of Liberty project has requested assistance with mapping and other modding duties to speed up progress with the mod. State of Liberty is a project designed to bring Liberty City (of GTA3), Vice City and San Andreas to a single game engine.

After many hours of work, Design Your Own Mission (DYOM) creators Dutchy3010 and PatrickW have opened their new mission database to the public. Those familiar with the original will know it offered hosting with basic authentication for management, but after DYOM's massive success an overhaul of the web operations was deemed necessary.

The new features include an account system, so that uploaders can login to manage their existing uploads, as well as rate and comment on other uploads. The account system also allows for many additional features, such as statitics and profile information. Further information is available in a news post on the site itself.

After waking up to a victorious 7-2 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, I figured it would be a good a time as any to chase some of the tumbleweeds away from the blog and post something. Given that the 4th Amendment is barely on judicial life support now, and the various other events which have transpired since this case began, this is somewhat of a hollow victory. But it's still nice to see that my evil plan (or my chaotic, complete lack thereof) worked.

But, yea, way back when we fist posted the little GTA mod which got the moral panic ball rolling again, lots of people told us to shut up and say we made the whole thing up so that the whole issue would go away. A few people ostensibly on "our side" even threatened us, rather comically, with physical violence if we didn't. Now, it's hard to say whether the media and the politicians would have slowed down had we said it was a hoax or whatever, so we can't really take the credit for the whole mess either way. Nonetheless, we made the decision to stand our ground and provoke the would-be censors into showing themselves.

As some of you will have already seen, at the end of last month Maxorator released his Vehicle Loader; a refreshing new take on vehicle modding in VC. Maxorator's script hooks directly into the game when placed in the 'mss' directory of a Vice City installation (MSS stands for Miles Sound System and was originally intended to auto-load additional audio code libraries), and from there it handles tasks normally associated with installing a vehicle manually. What's extraordinary, is its methods are both easier and more feature-rich than any 'mod-installer' currently available.

The tool works on the simple (and increasingly popular) premise of not actually modifying the game's original data files. A vehicle's model, textures and collision (.dff, .txd and .col respectively) are instead packaged in a 7-Zip compressed archive, which is then placed in a directory named 'vehicles' (that you must create yourself) in the Vice City installation directory. If you're not already familiar with 7-Zip, it's identical in function to ZIP or RAR archives, and is compatible with all good archive software.

Each archive should contain the model, textures, collision, and an XML file. Crucially, this XML file is where you can configure all vehicle attributes that would otherwise be defined in handling.cfg, default.ide, and so on. What's really exciting is we're not just confined to settings already editable in those old data files - Maxorator is steadily adding additional features, some of which were previously almost impossible to edit. Some of the already-existing features include configuring your vehicles with AI (unlimited additional custom police cars/bikes/tanks anyone?), animations, sounds, and version 0.93 adds support for bodykits/tuning parts similar to SA.

If all of that sounds a little confusing to start with - don't worry. Maxorator has included multiple example XML files for many of the original Vice City vehicles. If you're interested in creating an archive compatible with his tool, it's as simple as creating a new .7z archive; adding the .dff, .txd and .col; then editing one of the example XML files to your tastes before including it in your package. Downloaders need only place the .7z file in their 'vehicles' folder, and the car will be added to the game. What's even more awesome, is the car is added - it doesn't replace an already existing vehicle. On top of that, you can add new vehicle archives while the game is running, and it will load them on-the-fly! You can either spawn your car or wait for it to appear (assuming you configured it to do so). I'm sure I don't need to elaborate on how useful all this is.

Notably, the script will also detect custom wheels on vehicle models, and automatically disable the generic wheels that are configured for original VC vehicles. This means after almost a decade of service, DMagic1's Wheel Mod can be retired from active duty.

Besides the modding features, there are also huge mod-management advantages too. Since no original files need to be modified, you can return your installation to its original state simply by removing the 'vehicles' folder containing the script's archives. This one tool handles everything, and it does so with almost no input from the user. No worrying about backups, or lengthy debugging!

Be sure to check out the link to his tool below - Maxorator is still adding even more features to new versions, and there's lots more info in the mod's description. You will also find some links to VC mods there (including mine!) that are now available in MVL-format.

To celebrate the beginning of 2011 and the submission of over 10,000 missions to the Design Your Own Mission database, Dutchy3010 and PatrickW have released version 6 of their revolutionary mission-creation mod. The release unveils the addition of the 'storyline' feature, allowing you to string together your homemade missions into your own rags-to-riches narrative, without any advanced modding skills necessary!

For those unfamiliar with DYOM, it enables the user to script a mission from within San Andreas. Rather than writing lines of code, you can strafe, sprint and hop your way around the San Andreas map; placing objectives, pickups, vehicles and more - all to be tied together in a mission (or sequence of missions!) that you can then upload to share with the world.

The storyline feature adds a new section to the game menu, with which you can configure the order and nature of your storyline's missions. You can add an intro and an outro to your storyline, that can be accompanied with a cutscene as in the original San Andreas. The intro is played first upon starting the storyline, after which the rest of the missions can be ordered using the new concept of mission triggers. Missions are each assigned a positional number (like an ID), and then assigned the number of a second mission that will be unlocked once this mission is completed. So if Mission3 is assigned the value of 5, Mission5 will be unlocked upon completion of Mission3. This therefore allows for non-linear gameplay for your storyline. Your storyline can be finally tied together using the outro mission, which is loaded automatically once all other missions have been completed.

Other features in V6 include a new pause screen allowing you to save, load or abort your progress, as well as some bug fixing. You can download your copy now or visit the release topic at GTAForums. Happy modding, and Happy New Year from all at GTAGarage!

If you tried to upload a mod to GTAGarage within the past few days, you were probably confronted with an error message - doh!

This was an unfortunate side effect of a recent server upgrade. Locating the cause of the problem took longer than expected, however uploads are now working again. And thanks to the server upgrade, uploading your mods should be faster than before!

"There's no reason to become alarmed, and we hope you'll enjoy the rest of your flight. By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?"

Starting this week, we'll be taking you all on a tour around the modding neighbourhood of the Grand Theft Auto community. There's mods for every kind of taste, pointless, awesome and some really weird ones. Most players go mod hunting as soon they finish the storyline, we will show you some that will give your game a huge boost of adrenaline, giving you the impression you just picked up a new game.

GTANet Annual Forum Awards 2008

Featured Discussion

Lots of players have been waiting for the modders to give them usable planes, but they are almost there, with a car! If you're interested in flying yours, follow this info and the videos in that thread.

Interview

We've been talking to Jost_Vice, current leader of the project Gostown, to bring you some details on the mod. Keep reading to find out more about it.

GTAG: What is Gostown6 exactly, just a new map?

JostVice: Gostown 6 is a total conversion mod for Grand theft auto San andreas. The mod has been alive for one year, and it had changed since it started. At the moment the map is pretty big, almost like San Andreas's countryside and follows a tropical theme for the landscape, with palm jungles and a New York City theme for the city. We have replaced a big amount of vehicles with scratch made ones, which is probably the part of the mod that most people has contributed to.

GTAG: Aside from the great map to explore, will we have some missions to go with it?

JostVice: The actual beta version (The next one that will be released) has got two or three tiny missions to play with, the fact that there aren't much skilled mission coders make it harder to code missions.

GTAG: Did you include Gostown in any of the GTA cannons or is it non related?

JostVice: No... the only involved thing with GTA is the sandbox feel. The planed storyline that can be seen on our topic doesn't match a GTA storyline. Still, we would like to include some of the game-play elements, such as racing.

GTAG: How many members do you have working on the mod right now, and what are they're tasks?

GTAG: Why a tropical island? Is there any other motive than having a good looking map?

JostVice: We wanted to do something different to any other GTA mod, and chose a tropical theme... which is also beautiful!

GTAG: Do you have any plans to port this into IV in the future?

JostVice: It would be definitely a dream coming true, but it wouldn't be possible if we ported it, we couldn't just do a port. The map and vehicles will need to be remodelled to match GTA:IV's quality and with the actual number of members in the group... it would take some time.

GTAG: What problems or limitations have you encountered when working with SA?

JostVice: There are problems, yes, maybe the most noticeable one is the streaming memory limit (64 MB if I remember correctly) that was increased using Sacky's SA limit adjuster increasing this limit allowed us to use more HD textures, wich means, more quality for the mod. Another problem, maybe not known by people, is the fact of that SA doesn't have any SDK, and we have to work using non-official tools, the work that has been put by the authors of these tools is incredible, and we love them, but using them sometimes end up in bugs.

GTAG: For the readers that I'm sure that are willing to give a try right now, what's the specs you recommend to run this mod?

JostVice: The recommended specs are a bit higher than SA's default ones:

GTAG: You were talking earlier about new vehicles, how many are they and which ones?

JostVice: We've replaced a high number of vehicles, sports car, muscle cars, normal poor cars, trucks or even airplanes.

GTAG: What is EVA?

JostVice: Eva is the new character, replacing CJ. We have planed a storyline that involves Eva as a assassin that will have to eliminate some targets in the paradise, getting different rewards as properties or new vehicles.

Hello all, just a quick note to say that the recently added Mod Manager has been renamed to Edit Mods in order to prevent confusion with GGMM. A few more cosmetic updates are due shortly as we continue to update the website. If you have any problems accessing or using the website, please email your bugs to [email protected], and we will help to fix them as soon as we can.